EDINBURGH, United Kingdom, May 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NuCana plc (NASDAQ:NCNA) announced today it has been honored with two prestigious awards from Life Sciences Scotland during its annual Life Sciences Awards gala event held in Glasgow on May 16, 2018. Hugh S. Griffith, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, was presented with the Outstanding Contribution award. Additionally, NuCana was awarded Investment of the Year.

NuCana is a rapidly growing clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company applying an innovative new technology to significantly improve treatment for cancer patients. The awards have been given in recognition of the major contributions NuCana is making to the Life Sciences sector in Scotland and the advancements the company is introducing in the treatment of cancer.

Mr. Griffith was personally recognized as an exceptional life sciences industry leader with the Outstanding Contribution award. He commented: “To receive the Outstanding Contribution award for work that I am so passionate about is a privilege. I relish the opportunity to do such meaningful work and develop new and effective treatments for cancer patients. I am fortunate to have such a dedicated team and I look forward to continuing to lead them at NuCana.”

Commenting on the Investment of the Year award to NuCana, he said, “We are honored to be recognized by Life Sciences Scotland for our achievements of the last year. At NuCana our objective is to develop much more effective and safer anti-cancer medicines and ultimately improve patients’ survival outcomes. Our 2017 activities, including our $114 million IPO on Nasdaq, have been major factors in helping us achieve our goal.”

The company’s ProTide technology has the potential to transform cancer treatment by offering more effective and safer medicines. NuCana’s new treatments are designed to penetrate cancer cells more effectively, overcome key resistance mechanisms, and produce higher concentrations of the active anti-cancer agents. NuCana is conducting large-scale clinical studies with its ProTides in a wide range of different solid tumors, including cancer of the ovary, pancreas, biliary tract and colon.

The Life Sciences Awards from Life Sciences Scotland recognize the vital life sciences industry thriving in Scotland by celebrating and recognizing individuals and organizations who have, in the last year, made significant contributions to the industry. The Life Sciences Scotland Industry Leadership Group is a joint industry enterprise of agencies and government strategy teams created to develop, drive and deliver the Life Sciences Strategy in Scotland.

About NuCana plc

NuCana® is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on significantly improving treatment outcomes for cancer patients by applying our ProTide™ technology to transform some of the most widely prescribed chemotherapy agents, nucleoside analogs, into more effective and safer medicines. While these conventional agents remain part of the standard of care for the treatment of many solid tumors, their efficacy is limited by cancer cell resistance mechanisms and they are often poorly tolerated. Utilizing our proprietary technology, we are developing new medicines, ProTides, designed to overcome key cancer resistance mechanisms and generate much higher concentrations of anti-cancer metabolites in cancer cells.

Our most advanced ProTide candidates, Acelarin® and NUC-3373, are new chemical entities derived from the nucleoside analogs gemcitabine and 5-fluorouracil, respectively, two widely used chemotherapy agents. Acelarin is currently being evaluated in three clinical studies for patients with ovarian cancer, biliary cancer and pancreatic cancer. NUC-3373 is currently in a Phase 1 study for the potential treatment of a wide range of advanced solid tumors.

For more information, please visit: www.nucana.com. 

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are based on the beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management of NuCana plc (the “Company”). All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this press release are forward-looking statements, including statements concerning the initiation, timing, progress and results of clinical studies of the Company’s product candidates. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risks and uncertainties set forth in the "Risk Factors" section of our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2017 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on March 22, 2018, and subsequent reports that we file with the SEC. Forward-looking statements represent the Company’s beliefs and assumptions only as of the date of this press release. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this press release to conform any of the forward-looking statements to actual results or to changes in its expectations.

For more information, please contact:

Hugh S. Griffith
Chief Executive Officer
+44 131 357 1111
info@nucana.com

Westwicke Partners
Chris Brinzey
+1 339-970-2843
Chris.brinzey@westwicke.com

RooneyPartners
Marion Janic
+1 212-223-4017
mjanic@rooneyco.com

Source: NuCana plc